Black-White Differences among College Students: A Comparison of MMPI and MMPI-2 Norms

Abstract

In 1964, Butcher, Ball, and Ray administered the original Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to White students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) and Black students at North Carolina College at Durham, an all-Black institution, in order to evaluate the relationship of socioeconomic status (SES) to Black-White differences on the inventory. In the 30 intervening years, UNC-CH has been racially integrated to a significant degree, and the MMPI has been restandardized with proportional representation of Black adults in the national sample on which the norms of MMPI-2 were established. Undergraduate students at UNC-CH (65 White males, 48 Black males, 66 White females, and 58 Black females) were given a research version of the MMPI. Raw scores on the basic scales were obtained from these records for both the MMPI and the MMPI-2. These scores were then plotted on their respective norms and the resulting T scores were analyzed for ethnic, gender, and SES differences. The mean T scores on the MMPI-2 norms for all four groups were found to be generally lower than those on the original MMPI norms, with the average scores for the Black males showing the largest reductions. In addition, the SES of the families of origin of these students was found to be related to scores on both sets of norms. Covarying for SES had a greater impact on the T-score differences on the original norms than for the MMPI-2. The implications of these findings for the use of the MMPI-2 in the assessment of ethnic minority subjects were discussed.